Hunter Biden’s legal woes are expanding. The second son of President Joe Biden was indicted for a second time in connection to his taxes.
The most recent indictment includes allegations that Mr Biden, 53, didn’t pay at least $1.4m in federal taxes that he owed between 2016 and 2019.
The fresh legal filing comes after a plea deal fell apart in July which was supposed to see Mr Biden admitting to some tax and firearm offences in exchange for avoiding prison time.
The initial indictment came in September when prosecutors revealed three counts of lying on an application form to buy a handgun in 2018.
Congressional Republicans have used Mr Biden’s legal problems, past drug use, and foreign business dealings to open an impeachment inquiry into the president, despite no evidence supporting any links to the elder Biden.
This is an outline of Hunter Biden’s legal problems.
The plea deal agreed by Mr Biden’s legal team and the Department of Justice in June included Mr Biden being charged with two misdemeanour counts after not paying his taxes on time in 2017 and 2018 and admitting that he had unlawfully had a gun while also using drugs, agreeing to a being treated and monitored for his drug use instead of being charged with a felony and possibly going to jail.
After Republicans argued that Mr Biden had received a “sweetheart deal”, two IRS officials testified before Congress claiming that politics had damaged the investigation to the benefit of Mr Biden.
In August, the deal fell apart after it was studied by District Judge Maryellen Noreika, who called the deal “atypical” and declined to give it the green light.
The Delaware US Attorney David Weiss, appointed by then-President Donald Trump, began his probe in 2019, looking into claims of criminal actions by Mr Biden.
After requesting it, he was appointed as a special counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland on 11 August, handing him more power and the ability to file charges outside his jurisdiction as the US Attorney for Delaware.
While Republicans had already argued that a special counsel should be appointed, they still found reasons to complain about the appointment of Mr Weiss, even though he’s a Trump appointee.
Members of the GOP complained about Mr Weiss taking part in the failed plea deal and that the Department of Justice hadn’t been quick enough in appointing a special counsel, claiming that Mr Weiss would shield Mr Biden from legal action and hamper their own probes.
But on 14 September, prosecutors announced that they had indicted Mr Biden on three counts connected to him buying a Colt Cobra handgun in October 2018, just two months after spending time in rehab, the BBC noted. Two of those counts claimed that Mr Biden lied, stating on a federal gun application form that he wasn’t a drug user, with both counts carrying possible jail time of a decade each.
The third count regarded having a gun while using drugs – a charge carrying a maximum sentence of five years behind bars. Mr Biden pleaded not guilty to all three charges in October.
Mr Biden’s top lawyer for the previous half-decade, Christopher Clark, left the case on 15 August but stated in a court notice that he could be called to testify about the plea agreement in a possible future trial.
Mr Biden then found legal representation in Abbe Lowell, who has previously worked for former President Bill Clinton, as well as Mr Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner.
Mr Lowell brought a more adversarial tack to Mr Biden’s legal strategy. Mr Biden sued the IRS on 18 September in connection to the testimony to Congress given by two of its investigators.
The lawsuit claims that the investigators “targeted and sought to embarrass” Mr Biden by revealing his confidential tax details. Many private details of Mr Biden’s life came to light after he left a laptop at a repair shop in Delaware in 2019 and didn’t return to collect it. Information on the laptop later reached the public eye.
Abbe Lowell has a history of representing high-profile political figures
